An endless stream of comments, and people “trying out” Google+ annoys you

You’re pretty happy with your “friends” set up on Facebook

You really don’t want to start over, reorganizing and categorizing and learning a new set of social media skills

You think discussions about social media are boring

You’re concerned that Google already knows too much about you (they do regardless of your *privacy* settings)

My big thoughts about Google+

Starting over is fun (since discovery is the most addictive quality of social media, then you can have that “look who I just discovered on Google+” feeling over and over again

Circles are just groups with a nicer user interface to organize and sort

At the moment the filtering (how you tune in to what you want to hear) is none existent (you can mute a post, but not a circle)

I personally love talking about social media, therefore many of the discussions about Google+ that are happening exclusively on Google+ are interesting to me

The best discussions about Google+ are suggestions and questions about how to make it better (here’s the Google Group that seems to have the most educated discussions about future Google+ functionality.

Video chat with Michael Dell and 10 or so other people can be really entertaining, or boring, depending on your perspective (Yes, MD is regularly using the final AH HA feature of Google+: HANGOUTS, video chat with 10 of your social associates.)

Google IS going to hook all this stuff up into an even more formidable social network. Previous attempts failed, but they are betting the farm and the 2011 and 2012 company bonuses on social projects.

The social media 101 summary: If you like Facebook, stay there. If you like Twitter check out Google+. If you work in social media, you don’t need to be *reading* about Google+ you need to be *using* Google+.

Of course I’m sticking with Google+. I do love a good social media semantic discussion. I aspire to Brogan’s social footprint. And there is a Chrome extension that lets you turn off animated gifs in Google+ (link to StopAnimations)

So if you’re going to make the plunge, by all means, get ready for either fun or overwhelm. Here’s my Google+ address:jmacofearth so you can hook up with me once you are inside. And if you need an invite let me know. The floodgates appear to be open to all.

I finally had a chance to check out the Google+, and to find out how it’s different from other social media channels. After spending two days of goofing off and circling with other people on the site, the differences are all about our PEE PEE 🙂